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Penelope Zarganis, Librarian at the British School at Athens, tells us about a project to digitise the library’s unique collection of aerial photographs of Greece…

The reading room of the BSA’s main library in Athens

The British School at Athens (BSA) is a post-graduate research institute for Hellenic Studies, one of the 7 British International Research Institutes sponsored by the British Academy. The School’s library and archive collections cover all aspects of research on Greece, from prehistory to the present day, in many different formats. In addition to the main library based in Athens, the School maintains a small library specialising in Cretan subjects at its research base at Knossos in Crete.The holdings of both libraries were added to Copac in February 2017.

Seventy years ago the British School at Athens was given a collection of aerial reconnaissance photographs of Greece taken during the Second World War by the RAF and Allied Forces between 1943 and 1945. The collection represents approximately 750 flights, resulting in more than 30,000 individual photographs or frames, showing the topography of Greece at that time. They are of interest to archaeologists for identifying or comparing archaeological sites, to anthropologists and geographers studying changes in land use or settlement organisation, and to historians of Greece during the Second World War for topographical information on the final years of the German occupation.

Recently the BSA library received funding for a two-stage project to make this collection of aerial photographs accessible online through the BSA’s website.

Initial research revealed that the collection is unique. The negatives were not saved and this collection of prints is the only one in existence. The prints were developed under wartime conditions and are deteriorating. This meant that while making the collection accessible we also had to conserve it. The prints are mostly 21cm x 21cm with a frisket (band) at one edge giving frame number, flight squadron details, date, time, focal length and height. Each flight has been assigned a local number to aid retrieval. The prints are exceptionally clear and designed to be viewed in three dimensions using stereoscopic lenses.

The first stage of the project, undertaken by Gian Piero Milani (Oxford University, 2017 onwards), mapped the flight paths of each run onto a digital map of Greece using GIS (geographical information system) technology. It is now possible to follow each flight in its entirety, and in the online index researchers can click on a region or sub-region to locate the individual flight paths, and identify the BSA ID number for each flight.

Image from the digital map of Greece, showing the Thessaloniki area with a flight path (black polygon) and individual frames (plane icons) marked, and the information box for a selected frame.

The second stage of the project involves digitising the prints and linking the digital images to the online index so that researchers can learn whether an aerial photograph exists for their area of interest without physically handling the fragile prints. In addition, GIS applications will enable us to enhance the geographical information associated with these images by linking them to satellite imagery.

A significant element of the project has been the use of the application QGIS to create the geo-referenced data that has been uploaded into the School’s digital management system (Axiell’s EMu), reducing the time required for creating and entering data.

This involved four stages of work:

1. Using QGIS to create data for each flight and each frame/print to be uploaded into EMu.

2. Linking this digital data record, through QGIS, to the geo-referenced flight path index on the BSA website. The standard for this level of geo-referencing was established by the National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP) based in Edinburgh. Each frame is indicated by a point/dot within a flight path. Selecting the dot brings up an information box about the frame/print taken from the data entered into EMu (note: this feature is not live on the BSA website at the time of writing, but will be available soon).

3. Creating a geographical index of the regions and sub-regions of Greece, using the European Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) to standardise the place-names. Researchers are thus able to select a region to identify which flights they need.

4. Scanning each frame/print and adding it to the relevant digital data record. This image will then be added as a thumbnail to the information box in the online index (not yet completed).

A photo-mosaic of some of the frames stitched together, taken from the flight path over Thessaloniki marked in the previous image. The frisket reads: 682/570.OCT 7.44.F20″1420.6-21,000’Confidential. Transcribed: Photographed by the British RAF 682nd Squadron/Sortie 570/ Oct. 7th 1944/Focal length 20 inches/Time 14.20/Altitude 21,000 feet/Confidential.

Since the online index to these World War II allied reconnaissance flights was completed and made available on the British School at Athens website, interest in the collection has been impressive. The project will ultimately provide visual online access to the prints to enable researchers to identify precisely the areas photographed. It will also provide enhanced information for research citation, including source, date, and precise geo-referencing data (longitude and latitude), while preserving the collection by limiting physical access to the precious original prints.

The Institute of Ismaili Studies & ISMC Library (IIS-ISMC) aims to serve scholarship in areas and languages of interest to the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations and the Institute of Ismaili Studies by emphasising the development of collections of primary and secondary resources, and published and rare materials, in the fields of Islamic studies and Muslim civilisation, as well as in the Humanities in general.

The library gathers materials published in and about the major areas of the Muslim world and their diasporas, as well as their history and evolution, while specifically paying attention to topics such as Ismaili studies, wider Shi’i studies, and Qur’anic studies and education.

Among the special collections, library highlights include the donation of the personal library of Professor Annemarie Schimmel, an important collection focusing on the Indo-Muslim communities and cultures, which contains several out of print works in Sindhi, Persian and Urdu; and also the donation of part of the library and personal archive of Professor Mohammed Arkoun, including his professional correspondence, notes, offprints of his articles and over 200 theses on Islamic thought, history and culture.

The library also houses an important collection of books in Ottoman Turkish that mainly includes works of literature from the Tanzimat and post-Tanzimat period, particularly novels, poetry and dramas, as well as travel literature, language materials and historical works, dating from the 18th to the early 20th centuries.

To browse or limit your search to its holdings, select the Main Search tab in Copac and choose ‘Institute of Ismaili Studies & ISMC Library’ from the list of libraries.

Erika Delbecque, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Reading, tells us about some of the more unusual items they hold…

The holdings of the University of Reading Special Collections Service, which were added to COPAC earlier this year, are incredibly varied. They range from notebooks by Samuel Beckett to a medieval schoolbook and Russian translations of The Wizard of Oz. Working with such a wide range of material allows us, and our students and readers, to make interesting connections across collections and disciplines. To give a flavour of the type of material visitors may come across in Special Collections, in this blog post we highlight five of our most surprising items.

This tiny bookcase, entitled Book-case of knowledge, or library for youth, contains ten didactic books for children on topics such as English history and Mathematics. Dating from 1803, it was produced at a time when ideas by philosophers such as Locke and Rousseau on the innocence of childhood led to the creation of a new concept of childhood and a renewed interest in the education of children. Blurring the distinction between books and toys, bookcases such as these aimed to encourage learning through play.

It is part of the Children’s Collection, comprising over 6,000 children’s books and journals from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

In the 17th and the 18th centuries, a number of severe winters resulted in the River Thames freezing solid. This phenomenon attracted many visitors, and fairs and pageants were held on the ice, including what were to become known as frost fairs. Stalls and booths were set up selling toys and books, beer, wine, and gingerbread, and oxen and sheep were roasted. One of the most popular entertainments on the ice was to visit one of the many printing presses on the frozen river. People had their names printed, sometimes accompanied by an illustration or a piece of verse, as a keepsake to commemorate the occasion of their visit.

The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents (first published in 1607) is a wonderful illustrated bestiary that lists all manner of creatures from elephants to bees. Each entry describes the creature in detail, giving commentary from ancient, medieval and contemporary sources. Common animals and mythical creatures are listed indiscriminately. An example of the latter category is the hydra depicted here, a nine-headed monster from Ancient Greece with a fatally poisonous breath that grows two heads when one is severed.

This book can be found in the Cole Library, which covers the history of early medicine and zoology from the earliest times to the present day. It was compiled by F. J. Cole, who was a professor of zoology at the University of Reading from 1907 to 1939.

A view of the Great Exhibition of 1851

Lane’s telescopic view of the ceremony of Her Majesty opening the Great Exhibition of All Nations, 1851. London: C.A. Lane, 1851. GREAT EXHIBITION–11/29

The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, also known as the Crystal Palace Exhibition, was held in Hyde Park, London from 1 May to 15 October 1851. Our Great Exhibition Collection contains around 200 books, periodicals, pamphlets and ephemera from that time. It includes this souvenir diorama from the Exhibition, which folds out to reveal a three-dimensional view of Crystal Palace, seen through a peephole.

Fat alpacas

The alpaca. [s.l]: [s.n.], 1844. MERL LIBRARY RESERVE–3519-ALP

The library of the Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading is the most important collection in the country for the study of the history of British agriculture, the countryside and rural society. This pamphlet from 1844, aimed at British farmers, promotes the alpaca as a profitable alternative to other breeding stock in England, claiming that the alpaca is “as fat as any sheep I ever saw” and that the animals “never ramble from their hill pasture”. In case alpacas are not of interest, the advertisers add that they also sell “turtle alive, or ready cooked and securely packed in jars”…

It’s been a while since we updated you about what’s going on with the NBK. While there isn’t much to see yet, there’s a lot going on in the background. OCLC are busy with the technical aspects, creating an instance of the CBS system which is going to host the NBK data, and we’ve been contacting libraries to get data to put on it.

We’re asking all libraries for new full loads for the NBK, rather than using data we already hold for Copac. With a new database and new processing procedures we wanted to start with a new, clean, up-to-date set of data. We also know that some libraries don’t currently send all their data to Copac – for instance, they might send book data to Copac and serials data to SUNCAT – and for the NBK we want to include all the data that is visible on the local catalogue.

We’ve passed data from 11 libraries over to OCLC for loading, and have more lined up to send us their data. We have a target of 75 libraries to be on the NBK by January 2018 – if you’d like to be one of them, please contact us: nbk.copac@jisc.ac.uk. More libraries will be added to the NBK in 2018 and 2019, with the aim of reaching 225 libraries by 2020.

We’re looking for new libraries as well as existing Copac and SUNCAT contributors, so if you’re an academic, research, or specialist library we’d like to hear from you.

There will be a chance to hear more about the NBK at the NoWAL conference on July 20th, where we will be presenting a poster about the project, and Bethan will be available to discuss and answer any questions.

We’re also going to be running some regional events to talk to libraries about the NBK and how they can get involved. The first one will be in Manchester on September 4th, and you can sign up here. We’re planning to run more events around the country over the course of the project.

Tony Pilmer, Librarian at the National Aerospace Library, picks out some of the things that make the library special…

National Aerospace Library reading room

The National Aerospace Library is the rather grand name of the library and archive of the Royal Aeronautical Society. The Society is open to anyone who is professionally interested in aeroplanes, helicopters, drones, launching things into space, hot air balloons etc., whether they are involved in designing, building, maintaining, testing, flying, administering, litigating – or simply enjoy researching the history of aviation.

The Society started in 1866 when a group of scientifically-minded individuals got together to work out how people could fly. For that, of course, they needed access to the best literature available, and so the library began. Then, as members got older and started looking for safe homes for their collections, the Society’s library was found to be a natural choice.

For over one hundred and fifty years we have continued to give members (and now non-members) access to the best of new resources, whilst also preserving some amazing historical materials for historians, and indeed anyone looking for old answers to new questions.

We open the doors of our Farnborough Reading Room to all, although the specialist nature of our collections means that we mainly attract professionals, historians and undergraduate and postgraduate students – there are hundreds of dissertations and theses waiting to be written on our shelves.

Our tours can last from two minutes to two hours (more if you get lost exploring our shelves), so I thought I’d better limit myself to highlighting seven things that make the National Aerospace Library so special…

#1: New stuff

We collect the best new aerospace publications, including textbooks, conference proceedings, journals and magazines. We also go through our new journals and transfer the details of the articles of most interest to our members and readers onto our library catalogue and, as a consequence, onto COPAC.

#2: Rather old stuff

The Library holds aeronautical material dating from 1515 onwards. Some of the gems of our collections have been digitised and placed on our heritage website, including the first technical drawings of an aeroplane and the notebooks of the Father of Aeronautics, Sir George Cayley.

Page from the notebook of Horace Short, containing detailed sketches of the Wright Flyer from which the first official aircraft plans were made (1909)

Page from Sir George Cayley’s notebook – ‘Sea’ (1799-1811)

#3: Royal Aeronautical Society stuff

Letter from Orville Wright to Griffiths Brewer, 1st April 1922

Royal Aeronautical Society members have always been at the cutting edge of research.

Not only do we have letters from members of the Society to key figures in aviation, including the Wright Brothers, we also have recordings of lectures and interviews with many of them.

We have started to make available some of our audio material as podcasts, including recordings of Chuck Yeager and the men behind the Fairey Delta II and the World Speed Record of 1956.

We also hold the Royal Aeronautical Society Archive, which contains some wonderful material, including this cartoon of Sir Robert Hardingham, one of the Society’s past presidents.

Cartoon of Sir Robert Hardingham, President of the Society of Licensed Aircraft Engineers and Technologists, later part of the Royal Aeronautical Society. Tech Air (February 1969) p.23

#4: Photo collection

We hold over one hundred thousand images in our photographic collection. We work with the Mary Evans Picture Library to market our digitised collections to individuals and to corporate users and…

Okay, I’m rumbled, I’ve just added this paragraph so that I can include some nice photos of aeroplanes!

18 Hawker Hunters of 111 Squadron at the Farnborough Air Show in 1960

Airship R101 at its mooring mast at Cardington, about 1929

The first flight of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works DarkStar, 29 March 1996

#5: Volunteers

We have a great band of volunteers who are helping us to conserve and record our collections…

National Aerospace Library volunteers at work…

#6: Staff

…and we have a small, but perfectly formed staff to help readers find the material they want, whether in person, by phone or via e-mail. Our Chief Librarian, Brian Riddle, has worked in the Library for over thirty years – so what he doesn’t know about the collections isn’t worth knowing!

Brian Riddle

#7: Turning grown adults back into small children

After just an hour at the National Aerospace Library, even the most serious grown-up has often turned back into the girl or boy who first saw an aeroplane swoop down in front of their eyes.

We have heard though that not everybody likes aeroplanes as much as we do, and for those who don’t there are over fifty other libraries like ours – of professional and learned societies – both scattered around London and further afield. You can find out how to access the library on your favourite subject by visiting the website of the London Learned & Professional Societies Librarians’ Group.

If you are involved with a small specialist library that has a collection of historic/research interest, but which doesn’t currently have a web based catalogue, the Jisc Copac team would be very interested in hearing from you:

to improve the visibility of your collections through inclusion in Copac

and potentially to provide you with a web catalogue interface for your collection

One of the roles of the Copac union catalogue is to connect the UK (and wider) research community with the research materials they need, whilst helping to promote the contributed collections to the widest possible user community. Copac includes many of the major UK libraries and, with the move of Copac into the Jisc National Bibliographic Knowledgebase (NBK), the number of academic libraries will be increasing. However, we are also focused on incorporating the catalogues of smaller specialist libraries with collections of national and international research interest. By making these smaller catalogues part of Copac we help to make the collections of these, potentially less familiar, libraries visible internationally, increasing their accessibility to the research community.

At the moment we take catalogue records in a range of data formats, but we are aware that not every small library will have an electronic catalogue and an online presence. We have had interest expressed in a simple Copac cataloguing interface that would allow small libraries to create electronic records for their materials, which we might then include in Copac. Such a cataloguing service would not presuppose any understanding of MARC or other data standards and would be aimed primarily at small libraries, with historic collections, that don’t have their own online catalogue.

Before we decide whether we should be developing a simple cataloguing service, we need to have a better sense of which libraries might be interested in such a service.
If you think this would be relevant to your library could you get in touch and let us know the following:

Which library are you involved with and what is the size and nature of the collection?

Is your collection accessible to researchers and others?

What type of catalogue/finding aid do you have currently?

Would you use a simple cataloguing interface that allowed you to create and export records in multiple formats, including MARC21?

Would you wish to see the records you create included in Copac – moving to the NBK in future?

Would you value a local ‘view’ of your data that had the appearance of a local catalogue, allowing you to search and view just your collection?

Would you be willing to test and provide feedback on a trial cataloguing interface?

Deadline: We would like expressions of interest by the 31st July 2017.

In our latest feature Shane Mawe, Assistant Librarian at the Library of Trinity College Dublin, tells us aboutChanged Utterly: Ireland and the Easter Rising, the Library’s new online resource about the history of the 1916 Easter Rising.

The Berkeley Library, Trinity College Dublin, Trinity Week 2015

The 1916 Easter Rising was an armed insurrection against British rule in Ireland which took place between 24 and 30 April 1916, mainly in Dublin, but with skirmishes in other areas. Mounted by around 1,200 insurgents from republican groups, the Rising was quickly suppressed by British forces, culminating in the execution of fifteen of the leaders in May 1916.

In April 2015 the Library of Trinity College Dublin embarked on an ambitious blog project to commemorate the Rising. 52 blog posts were published during the lead up to the anniversary commemorations in April 2016. The aim of the blog was to showcase the surprising breadth of the 1916 collections held by the Library and to act as a catalyst for research. Topics ranged from our copy of the Easter Proclamation to working conditions in Dublin Zoo during the conflict.

The summer of 2016 saw a performance of Bairbre Ní Chaoimh’s site-specific theatrical work, ‘Meeting ghosts in College Park’, which focused on characters whose 1916 stories were covered in the blog (John Joly, Elsie Mahaffy’s sister Rachel, and Lilly Stokes). We were also fortunate in 2016 to host the visit of Harry and Pearse O’Hanrahan, grandnephews of Micheál Ó hAnnrachain. Features in the print media (including The Irish Times and The Guardian) helped promote the work and raise the profile of the collections, and a number of our blog posts contributed to the Irish Examiner’s Irish Revolution series. The project also proved useful as an educational tool for primary schools throughout Ireland.

Overall, it was very gratifying to see such an upsurge of interest in the 1916 collections throughout the year.

We are now delighted to announce that the Changed Utterly blog has been redeveloped into a website. Launched in April 2017, the portal incorporates a broader selection of Easter Rising resources. Among the many new features are links to our online exhibition (in conjunction with the Google Cultural Institute) of photographs taken by Thomas Johnston Westropp of the ruins of Dublin, and a 44 page booklet covering the history of Trinity during the Rising and recording the events which commemorated the centenary. We are also pleased to report that the website has been shortlisted in the category of ‘Promoting Ireland Overseas’ at the upcoming Ireland eGovernment Awards. You can access the full site here: www.tcd.ie/library/1916.

The blog posts on the site explore the Library of Trinity College Dublin’s collections of 1916 related material originating from before, during and after the Rising, from all sides of the political spectrum. Our Twitter account (@TCDLib1916) also draws heavily on the collections in an effort to promote the blog and the Library’s resources.

One such resource is the Samuels Collection of Printed Ephemera which consists of material related to the 1916 Rebellion, World War I, the War of Independence and the Civil War. It was gathered in part by the Royal Irish Constabulary, and collected by Arthur Warren Samuels (1852-1925), Solicitor General for Ireland (1917-1918) and Attorney General (1918-1919). The collection of 642 items includes political pamphlets and broadsides, ballads and songs, and other forms of printed political items. The collection is fully catalogued and available to explore on COPAC (search using the author ‘Samuels Collection’).

With the help of our colleagues in Preservation & Conservation and Digital Resources & Imaging Services the collection is now fully digitised and freely available to view via the Digital Collections portal.

Shane Mawe
Assistant Librarian
Department of Early Printed Books and Special Collections
The Library of Trinity College Dublin
The University of Dublin
epbooks@tcd.ie

All images copyright the Board of Trinity College Dublin, reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holder.

While we are delighted that the National Bibliographic Knowledgebase will allow us to expose the holdings of many more UK HE libraries than are already part of Copac, this focus doesn’t give the full picture of the rich data sources we’re planning to include in the NBK, which we hope will benefit all areas of library collection management.

Journals and ejournals

The NBK will also provide the new UK platform for information about serial holdings. Building on the success of SUNCAT, and working with the expert SUNCAT team, we’re working to ensure that the NBK database and interface design incorporate the specialist features that are required for serials management, cataloguing, and search.

As well as this library-provided data, Jisc, libraries, and third party organisations are currently developing agreements with publishers for metadata feeds for vendor collections of digital material. Once these agreements are in place, we expect these data feeds to form a regularly-updated part of the NBK.

Open Access

The NBK aims to reduce friction between users and Open Access material by including records and links to Open Access material. Sources are likely to include public domain material from the Hathi Trust, information from the Directory of Open Access Books and the Directory of Open Access Journals, along with public domain material from other Jisc services such as Historical Texts and Zetoc.

Search

While there will be the ability to search across the whole of the NBK, we know that specialised use cases require specialised interfaces. We’re thinking about what might need to be included in serials, article, and Open Access interfaces. APIs and machine-to-machine interfaces will allow NBK data to be pulled out for use in other interfaces and systems, to meet your needs and workflows.

Get involved

Community engagement and input is a very important part of the NBK development. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions about the NBK, or would like to be involved in user consultations, please contact nbk@copac.jisc.ac.uk.

We’re pleased to announce that the holdings of the Horniman Library have been added to Copac.

The Horniman Library. Image copyright: Horniman Museum and Gardens

The Horniman Library collection contains books from the 16th century through to the present day. Holdings range from academic texts to accounts by early explorers and illustrated monographs. The collection covers a wide spectrum of subject areas related to the remit of the museum, focusing on natural history, anthropology and musical instruments.

The collection, which originated with Frederick Horniman’s own book collection, has been added to by subsequent directors, curators and librarians and now amounts to some 30,000 volumes.

The development of the library collections has been closely linked to object acquisition and curatorial practice in the museum and thus there is a strong connection between the book and object collections.

The library collection is primarily a resource for Horniman staff, and scholars with specific research needs. Public access is maintained to the library collections through our family reading programmes, including pop up library events in the museum and family reading spaces in our galleries, such as the Under 5s Book Zone beside the Apostle Clock on the North Hall Balcony.

To browse or limit your search to the Horniman Library, select the Main Search tab in Copac and choose ‘Horniman Library’ from the list of libraries.

David Wilson Library at night. Image copyright: University of Leicester.

Copac previously included the records for Leicester’s Special Collections and the holdings of the Mathematical Association Library. However this has now been expanded to include Leicester’s complete holdings.

The University of Leicester Library is housed in the David Wilson building. The Library contains over a million items and includes 1500 user spaces of all types, 350 PCs, 14 Group study rooms and a Special Collections Suite constructed to BS5454 standard, as well as several specialist study rooms and wireless network throughout. The building won the 2008 RIBA East Midlands Award for Architecture. It was designed by Associated Architects, and was formally opened by Her Majesty the Queen in 2007.

Leicester’s Special Collections include primary materials relating to Leicester authors, such as Sue Townsend and Joe Orton, extensive medieval manuscripts, and 19th century periodicals. One highlight is the Robjohns Collection, which contains most of the university’s medieval manuscripts and the library’s oldest book, a 12th century commentary on the Psalms by Gilbert de la Porée (Gilbertus Porretanus), Bishop of Tours (d. 1154).

The Special Collections also include the English Local History collection, which contains materials relating to English local topography, social and political history. The collection began with the Hatton collection (a special collection) which was donated in 1920-21 to coincide with the opening of the University (then the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland College). It was donated by Thomas Hatton, a local boot manufacturer, and includes his topographical library and major county histories.

The Mathematical Association (MA) was formed in 1871 as the Association for the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching. The MA is now the leading UK association for mathematical education at all levels from primary school to university, including postgraduate work. The MA library started on a very small scale in the 19th century and now comprises nearly 11000 text books, popular mathematics and higher mathematics books, and around 700 runs of mathematical periodicals from many different countries. The library also includes an exceptional collection of 300 largely mathematical manuscript exercise books from the 18th and 19th centuries: the John Hersee Collection. The MA library as a whole is a unique resource for the history of mathematics and its teaching, learning and popularisation in the UK from the 16th to the 21st centuries.

Since the mid-1950s, the collection has been accommodated in the University of Leicester Library, where the Special Collections include around 850 of the MA’s older (pre-1850) and rarer books and mathematical serials. The oldest book in the collection is a 1533 edition in Greek of Euclid’s Elements.

To browse or limit your search to Leicester’s holdings, select the Main Search tab in Copac and choose ‘Leicester University’ from the list of libraries. Once you have done so you will be given the option to limit your search further, to the holdings of either the main library, or those of the Mathematical Association.